from Sonnets To Orpheus (1922) By Rainer Maria Rilke I.i1 (Austro

from Sonnets To Orpheus (1922)
By Rainer Maria Rilke (Austro-Hungarian Empire)
Translated from the German by Edward Snow
I.i1
A tree arose. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O tall tree within the ear!
And all was silent. Yet in that silence
pulsed new genesis,2 new signaling, new change.
Creatures of stillness thronged out of the clear
disentangled forest, from nest and lair;
and it wasn’t cunning, wasn’t heed or fright
that put such softness in their step,
but listening. Bellow, shriek, and roar
seemed small inside their hearts. And where once
there’d scarcely been a hut to take this in,
a hidden refuge made of darkest longing
with an entranceway whose braces3 shook,-you built temples for them in their hearing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926
1
Da stieg ein Baum.
O Orpheus singt! O
Und alles schwieg.
ging neuer Anfang,
O reine Übersteigung!
hoher Baum im Ohr!
Doch selbst in der Verschweigung
Wink und Wandlung vor.
Tiere aus Stille drangen aus dem klaren
gelösten Wald von Lager und Genist;
und da ergab sich, daß sie nicht aus List
und nicht aus Angst in sich so leise waren,
sondern aus Hören. Brüllen, Schrei, Geröhr
schien klein in ihren Herzen. Und wo eben
kaum eine Hütte war, dies zu empfangen,
ein Unterschlupf aus dunkelstem Verlangen
mit einem Zugang, dessen Pfosten beben,-da schufst du ihnen Tempel im Gehör.
2
Snow translates the German Anfang as “genesis” for thematic and poetic reasons; a
more literal translation would simply to render this “beginning.”
3
Pfosten: an architectural support (such as a door or window jamb)
1
I.ii4
And almost a girl it was and came forth
from this glad unity of song and lyre
and shone brightly through her springtime veils
and made herself a bed within my ear.
And slept in me. And
The trees I’d always
palpable distances,5
and an entire life’s
all things were her sleep.
marveled at, these
the deep-felt meadows,
astonishments.6
She slept the world. Singing god, how did you
so perfect her that she never once
had need to be awake? Look, she arose and slept.
Where is her death? Ah, will you introduce
that theme before your song expires?-I can feel her drifting off... to where?... A girl almost...
4
Und
aus
und
und
fast ein Mädchen wars und ging hervor
diesem einigen Glück von Sang und Leier
glänzte klar durch ihre Frühlingsschleier
machte sich ein Bett in meinem Ohr.
Und schlief in mir. Und alles war ihr Schlaf.
Die Bäume, die ich je bewundert, diese
fühlbare Ferne, die gefühlte Wiese
und jedes Staunen, das mich selbst betraf.
Orpheus playing a lyre (Roman mosaic)
Sie schlief die Welt. Singender Gott, wie hast
du sie vollendet, daß sie nicht begehrte,
erst wach zu sein? Sieh, sie erstand und schlief.
Wo ist ihr Tod? O, wirst du dies Motiv
erfinden noch, eh sich dein Lied verzehrte?-Wo sinkt sie hin aus mir?... Ein Mädchen fast...
5
Though the wording here may seem cryptic, the translation is precise: fühlbare
Ferne literally means “touchable distances.”
6
jedes Staunen, das mich selbst betraf: more literally, “anything that had [ever]
caused me wonder”
2
I.iii7
A god can do it. But how, will you tell me, could
a man follow him through the narrow lyre?
His mind divides. Where two heart roads cross
there can be no temple for Apollo.
Singing, as you teach it, is not desire,
not the courting of some end to be attained.
Singing is being. Easy, for a god.
But for us, when are we? And when does he
cast all the earth and stars upon our lives?
It’s not, youth, when you’re in love, even
if then your voice forces open your mouth;-learn to forget those songs. They elapse.
True singing is a different breath.
A breath serving nothing. A gust in the god. A wind.
Apollo, a god of light and the sun,
truth and prophecy, medicine,
healing, plague, music, poetry, arts,
archery, and more; according to some
traditions, Orpheus was his son;
Roman copy of a Greek original, ca.
320 BCE
Also see the note for the following
poem in this selection.
7
Ein Gott vermags. Wie aber, sag mir, soll
ein Mann ihm folgen durch die schmale Leier?
Sein Sinn ist Zwiespalt. An der Kreuzung zweier
Herzwege steht kein Tempel für Apoll.
Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr,
nicht Werbung um ein endlich noch Erreichtes;
Gesang ist Dasein. Für den Gott ein Leichtes.
Wann aber sind wir? Und wann wendet er
an unser Sein die Erde und die Sterne?
Dies ists nicht, Jüngling, daß du liebst, wenn auch
die Stimme dann den Mund dir aufstößt,-- lerne
vergessen, daß du aufsangst. Das verrinnt.
In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch.
Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind.
3
I.vii8
Praising, that’s it! One appointed to praise,
he came forth like ore out of the stone’s
silence. His heart, O ephemeral winepress
for a vintage eternal to man.
Never does his voice die or turn to dust
when the divine moment seizes him.
All becomes vineyard, all becomes grape,
ripened in his sentient South.
Not mold in the vaults of kings
nor any shadow falling from the gods
can give his songs the lie.
He is one of the messengers who stay,
holding far into the doors of the dead
bowls heaped with fruit to be praised.
Dionysus is the god of wine, ritual ecstasy, and
intoxication, and, in many traditions, contrasted
with Apollo (a god of reason), although it must be
stressed that ancient Greeks did not view the two
as rivals.
According to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), the Apollonian is the basis of all
analytic distinctions. Everything that is part of
the unique individuality of man or thing is
Apollonian in character; all types of form or
structure are Apollonian, since form serves to
define or individualize that which is formed. The
Dionysian, is directly opposed to the Apollonian.
Drunkenness and madness are Dionysian because they
break down a man’s individual character; all forms
of enthusiasm and ecstasy are Dionysian, for in
8
Rühmen, das ists! Ein zum Rühmen Bestellter,
ging er hervor wie das Erz aus des Steins
Schweigen. Sein Herz, o vergängliche Kelter
eines den Menschen unendlichen Weins.
Nie versagt ihm die Stimme am Staube,
wenn ihn das göttliche Beispiel ergreift.
Alles wird Weinberg, alles wird Traube,
in seinem fühlenden Süden gereift.
Nicht in den Grüften der Könige Moder
straft ihm die Rühmung lügen, oder
daß von den Göttern ein Schatten fällt.
Er ist einer der bleibenden Boten,
der noch weit in die Türen der Toten
Schalen mit rühmlichen Früchten hält.
4
Dionysus and two Maenads,
(Attic vase, ca. 550-530 BCE)
such states man gives up his
individuality and submerges himself in
a greater whole.
Nietzsche believed that both forces
were present in Greek tragedy, and
that true art could only be produced
by the tension between the two forces.
I.xxvi9
But you, divine one, intoning to the very end,
when swarmed by the horde of spurned maenads
you drowned their cries with order, sublime one,
up from the mayhem rose your transforming song.
None there could harm your head or lyre,
however they raged and wrestled; all the rough
stones they threw at your heart became soft
when they touched you, and blessed with hearing.
At last, mad for vengeance, they ripped you apart,
but your sound lingered on in lions and rocks
and in the trees and birds. You sing there still.
O you lost god! You neverending trace!
Only because hatred tore and scattered you
are we hearers now and a mouth for nature.
Maenad carrying a hind
(Attic figure cup, ca.
480 BCE)
9
Du aber, Göttlicher, du, bis zuletzt noch Ertöner,
da ihn der Schwarm der verschmähten Mänaden befiel,
hast ihr Geschrei übertönt mit Ordnung, du Schöner,
aus den Zerstörenden stieg dein erbauendes Spiel.
Keine war da, daß sie Haupt dir und Leier zerstör.
Wie sie auch rangen und rasten, und alle die scharfen
Steine, die sie nach deinem Herzen warfen,
wurden zu Sanftem an dir und begabt mit Gehör.
Schließlich zerschlugen sie dich, von der Rache gehetzt,
während dein Klang noch in Löwen und Felsen verweilte
und in den Bäumen und Vögeln. Dort singst du noch jetzt.
O du verlorener Gott! Du unendliche Spur!
Nur weil dich reißend zuletzt die Feindschaft verteilte,
sind wir die Hörenden jetzt und ein Mund der Natur.
5
II.i10
Breathing, you invisible poem!
Worldspace11 is pure continuous interchange
with my own being. Equipoise
in which I rhythmically transpire.
Single wave
whose gradual sea I am;
of all possible seas the most frugal,-windfall of space.
How many of these places in space were once
in me. Many a breeze
is like my son.
Do you recognize me, air, you, full of places once mine?
You, once the smooth rind,
orb, and leaf of my words.
10
Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht!
Immerfort um das eigne
Sein rein eingetauschter Weltraum. Gegengewicht,
in dem ich mich rhythmisch ereigne.
Einzige Welle, deren
allmähliches Meer ich bin;
sparsamstes du von allen möglichen Meeren,-Raumgewinn.
Wieviele von diesen Stellen der Räume waren schon
innen in mir. Manche Winde
sind wie mein Sohn.
Erkennst du mich, Luft, du, voll noch einst meiniger Orte?
Du, einmal glatte Rinde,
Rundung und Blatt meiner Worte.
11
Weltraum: Rilke uses this
in German), but as a fusion
literally an interior room)
lyrical inner universe upon
noun not to mean “outer space” (as it normally would be
of the world (Welt) with the interior (Innenraum-to create the concept of Weltinnenraum, a sort of
which the artist draws inspiration.
6
II.v12
Flower-muscle, slowly pulling open
the anemone’s13 vast meadow morning,
until the loud sky’s polyphonic light
comes pouring down into its womb,
muscle of infinite reception
flexed in the quiet flower star,
sometimes so overwhelmed by fullness
that the sunset’s call to rest
is scarcely able to give you back
the wide-sprung petal edges: you,
resolve and strength of how many worlds!
We violent ones, we last longer.
But when, in which of all these lives,
are we finally open and receivers?
12
Blumenmuskel, der der Anemone
Wiesenmorgen nach und nach erschließt,
bis in ihren Schooß das polyphone
Licht der lauten Himmel sich ergießt,
in den stillen Blütenstern gespannter
Muskel des unendlichen Empfangs,
manchmal so von Fülle übermannter,
daß der Ruhewink des Untergangs
anemones
kaum vermag die weitzurückgeschnellten
Blätterränder dir zurückzugeben:
du, Entschluß und Kraft von wieviel Welten!
Wir, Gewaltsamen, wir währen länger.
Aber wann, in welchem aller Leben,
sind wir endlich offen und Empfänger?
13
In a 1914 letter to Lou Andreas-Salome, Rilke writes:
I am like the little anemone I once saw in the garden of Rome: it had opened
so wide during the day that it could no longer close at night. It was
terrifying to see it in the dark meadow, wide open, still taking everything
in, into its calyx, which seemed as if it had been furiously torn back, with
the much too vast night above it. And alongside, all its prudent sisters,
each one closed around its small measure of profusion.
7
II.xiii14
Be in advance of all parting, as if it were
behind you like the winter just now going by.
For among winters there’s one so endlessly winter
that, wintering, your heart will win through.
Be forever dead in Eurydice--, and climb more singingly,
climb more praisingly, back into the pure relation.
Here, among the vanishing, be, in the realm of decline
be a ringing glass that shatters even as it rings.
Be-- and know as well the terms of nonbeing,
the infinite ground of your inmost vibration,
so that, this once, you may wholly fulfill them.
To the used, as well as the mute and muffled
stock of nature’s fullness, to the inexpressible sums,
add yourself jubilantly, and nullify the score.1516
14
Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter
dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht.
Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.
Sei immer tot in Eurydike--, singender steige,
preisender steige zurück in den reinen Bezug.
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
Sei-- und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Bedingung,
den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung,
daß du sie völlig vollziehst dieses einzige Mal.
Zu dem gebrauchten sowohl, wie zum dumpfen und stummen
Vorrat der vollen Natur, den unsäglichen Summen,
zähle dich jubelnd hinzu und vernichte die Zahl.
15
The last words of the last line (vernichte die Zahl) are translated by Snow as
“nullify the score.” An alternate translation of this could be to “cancel out the
cost.”
16
In a letter to Katharina Kippenberg (composed 22 April 1922), Rilke writes, “The
thirteenth sonnet of the second part is for me the most valid of all. It includes
all the others, and it expresses that which-- though it still far exceeds me-- my
purest, most final achievement would someday, in the midst of life, have to be.”
Critic Robert writes of this sonnet, “Rilke writes of an ideal Orphic world in
which there is no difference in kind between inner and outer, visible and
invisible, singing and silence, holding and loosing-- ultimately between life and
death, which are the components of what the cycle calls a ‘double-realm,” (xxxi)
Vilain, Robert. Introduction. Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems. By Rilke. Transl.
Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
8
II.xvi17
Torn open by us again and again,
the god is the place that heals.
We’re jagged, because we want to know,
but he is scattered and serene.
Even the pure, the consecrated gift
he takes into his world no other way
than this: standing unmoved
opposite the open end.
Only the dead drink
from the spring heard here by us,-when the god signals to them silently, the dead.
To us just the noise is given.
And out of quieter instinct
the lamb begs for its bell.18
17
Immer wieder von uns aufgerissen,
ist der Gott die Stelle, welche heilt.
Wir sind Scharfe, denn wir wollen wissen,
aber er ist heiter und verteilt.
Selbst die reine, die geweihte Spende
nimmt er anders nicht in seine Welt,
als indem er sich dem freien Ende
unbewegt entgegenstellt.
Nur der Tote trinkt
aus der hier von uns gehörten Quelle,
wenn der Gott ihm schweigend winkt, dem Toten.
The Greek underworld (Attic
vase, 5th century BCE)
Uns wird nur das Lärmen angeboten.
Und das Lamm erbittet seine Schelle
aus dem stilleren Instinkt.
18
Critic Daniel Joseph Polikoff writes:
In the Sonnets, [...] the speaker [...] appears on rather intimate terms with
the God whom he addresses directly, employing the familiar (rather than
impersonal and formal) form of ‘you’ (du). The energy of the poetic
discourse, moreover-- rather than repeatedly dwelling upon the inaccessible
nature of the God-- consistently strives [...] to imagine the essence of
Orpheus’ divine being, and to re-envision the world from that perspective.
The momentum of poetic address generally constituting Rilke’s Sonnets to
Orpheus persistently tends, not to erase the difference between human and
divine being, but to bridge it; not to deny the God’s inhuman reach, but to
employ the vessel of poetic voice as a means of entry into the God’s
archetypically mythopoetic world (602).
Polikoff, Daniel Joseph. In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke: A Soul History. Wilmette:
Chiron, 2011. Print.
9
II.xxiii19
Call me to that one among your hours
that incessantly resists you:
beseechingly near like a dog’s face,
yet ever again turned away
just when you think to grasp it.
What’s thus withdrawn is most your own.
We are free. We were dismissed
at the very place where we expected welcome.
Afraid, we yearn for some handhold,
often too young for what’s ancient
and too old for what has never been.
And yet: only just when we praise,
since, ah, we are the branch and the axe
and the nectar of ripening risk.20
19
Rufe mich zu jener deiner Stunden,
die dir unaufhörlich widersteht:
flehend nah wie das Gesicht von Hunden,
aber immer wieder weggedreht,
wenn du meinst, sie endlich zu erfassen.
So Entzognes ist am meisten dein.
Wir sind frei. Wir wurden dort entlassen,
wo wir meinten, erst begrüßt zu sein.
Bang verlangen wir nach einem Halte,
wir zu Jungen manchmal für das Alte
und zu alt für das, was niemals war.
Orpheus und Eurydice (1806) by
Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein
Wir, gerecht nur, wo wir dennoch preisen,
weil wir, ach, der Ast sind und das Eisen
und das Süße reifender Gefahr.
20
Critic Thomas Martinec writes:
Rilke felt that with regard to the invisible world, humankind was confronted
with a twofold challenge: on the one hand we are asked to achieve the
spiritual act of metamorphosis on which the universe relies in order to reach
a deeper level of reality; on the other hand we have to appreciate our
present nature, because it, too, is a crucial dimension of our existence
[...] According to Rilke’s concept of a dual reality which he calls ‘the
whole’, we are not meant to live up to a timeless being, like God, or an
eternal reality, like heaven, or the promises of any ideology, but rather we
are to bear the timeless dimension of life in mind while celebrating the
moment (100).
Martinec , Thomas. “The Sonnets to Orpheus.” The Cambridge Companion to Rilke. Ed.
Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
10
II.xxviii2122
O come and go. You, still almost a child,
with your spell transform for an instant
the dance figure, make it one of those pure
constellations in which we fleetingly
transcend dull ordering Nature. For she was roused
to full hearing only when Orpheus sang.
You were still swayed by those ancient chords
and a bit annoyed if a tree took stock
before it followed where your hearing led.
You still knew the place where the lyre
rose resounding--: the undreamt-of center.
For it you practiced those beautiful steps
and hoped one day to toward
pure happiness your friend’s face and stride.23
21
O komm und geh. Du, fast noch Kind, ergänze
für einen Augenblick die Tanzfigur
zum reinen Sternbild einer jener Tänze,
darin wir die dumpf ordnende Natur
vergänglich übertreffen. Denn sie regte
sich völlig hörend nur, da Orpheus sang.
Du warst noch die von damals her Bewegte
und leicht befremdet, wenn ein Baum sich lang
Orpheus (1891) by Franz von Stuck
besann, mit dir nach dem Gehör zu gehn.
Du wußtest noch die Stelle, wo die Leier
sich tönend hob--; die unerhörte Mitte.
Für sie versuchtest du die schönen Schritte
und hofftest, einmal zu der heilen Feier
des Freundes Gang und Antlitz hinzudrehn.
22
Rilke was inspired to write the Sonnets to Orpheus upon hearing of the death of
his daughter’s friend, Wera Knoop. Some of the sonnets seem to address her directly
(transformed into the Eurydice role of the myth). This is one of those poems.
23
In a letter to Countess Sizzo (composed after Wera’s 1919 death), Rilke writes:
This pretty child, who only began to dance and was admired by all who saw her
then because of the art of movement and metamorphosis innate to her body and
to her temperament, explained unexpectedly to her mother that she could no
longer dance and did not wish to any more [...] In the time that was left to
her Wera made music; finally she only kept up her drawing, as if the dance
that was failing her was issuing forth from her ever more quietly, ever more
discreetly.
11
II.xxix24
Silent friend of many distances,
feel how your every breath enlarges space.25
Amid rafters of dark belfries
let yourself peal. Whatever feeds on you
is taking strength from such fare.
Know every path through transformation.
What one memory holds your deepest grief?
If you find drinking bitter, become wine.
Now in this night of fire and excess
be magic power at your senses’ crossroads,
the meaning of their strange encounter.
And if the earthly should forget you,
say to the silent loam: I flow.
To the rushing water speak: I am.
24
Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen, fühle,
wie dein Atem noch den Raum vermehrt.
Im Gebälk der finstern Glockenstühle
laß dich läuten. Das, was an dir zehrt,
wird ein Starkes über dieser Nahrung.
Geh in der Verwandlung aus und ein.
Was ist deine leidendste Erfahrung?
Ist dir Trinken bitter, werde Wein.
25
Sei in dieser Nacht aus Übermaß
Zauberkraft am Kreuzweg deiner Sinne,
ihrer seltsamen Begegnung Sinn.
Und wenn dich das Irdische vergaß,
zu der stillen Erde sag: Ich rinne.
Zu dem raschen Wasser sprich: Ich bin.
Critic Thomas Martinec writes:
The ultimate source of this breath is an ostensibly simple, yet essentially complex question:
‘How shall we live?’ For Rilke, as for many of his contemporaries, this question posed a great
challenge, all the more so as the key responses that poetic tradition had so far brought forth
appeared outdated in modern(ist) times. The most fundamental answer, that one should live
according to God’s will, had become definitively unreliable ever since German philosophy of
the nineteenth century had declared God to be dead. Furthermore, around the turn of the
century, belief in mankind’s capacity for love had been thoroughly shaken by psychoanalysis,
which had identified more mundane forces, such as drives of sexuality and power, at the core
of human relationships. In Rilke’s particular case, a whole series of failed loverelationships with various women had helped to increase his doubts about love as a means of
orientation or guide for life. A belief in progress seemed a promising option in the search
for the meaning of life: a huge wave of scientific and technological progress in the
nineteenth century gave rise to the assumption that, one day, mankind would be able to solve
its problems for itself. As far as the modernists were concerned, however, the drawbacks of
industrialization and ultimately the horrors of mass destruction in the First World War ruled
out this promise of meaning as well. Rilke was well aware of this void. Summarizing his novel
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) in a letter to Lotte Hepner he wonders, ‘how is
it possible to live if the elements of this life are wholly beyond comprehension? If we are
constantly insufficient in loving, uncertain in our resolutions, and impotent in the face of
death, how is it possible to exist?’ The ‘breath’ with which Rilke filled the ‘sails’ of both
the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus can be understood as the attempt to find a valid
answer to this existential question (96).
Martinec , Thomas. “The Sonnets to Orpheus.” The Cambridge Companion to Rilke. Ed.
Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
12

Download Report